All of this week's episodes of It Could Happen Here put together in one large file. Rendition to El Salvador: How the Trump Administration Is Sending Asylum Seekers to Labor Camps Miniature Ethnic Cleansing: Encampment Sweeps in Oakland Should You Flee the United States? Elon Musk Has Lost the Gamers Executive Disorder: White House Weekly #9 You can now listen to all Cool Zone Media shows, 100% ad-free through the Cooler Zone Media subscription, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. So, open your Apple Podcasts app, search for “Cooler Zone Media” and subscribe today! http://apple.co/coolerzone Sources/Links: Elon Musk Has Lost the Gamers https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/2024/09/15/deshaun-watson-trade-details-texans-browns/75189022007/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1ykCc588Zw https://thecourier.com/news/549130/browns-need-to-start-asking-questions-about-depodesta/ https://www.georgiaentertainment.com/2024/04/georgias-got-game-why-the-gaming-industry-is-larger-than-film-television-and-music-combined/#:~:text=The%20dominant%20entertainment%20industry%20is,than%203%20billion%20active%20gamers https://app2top.com/news/the-gaming-industry-in-2024-by-the-numbers-a-review-by-gamesindustry-276003.html https://www.ign.com/articles/asmongolds-twitch-channel-banned-following-racist-rant-about-palestinians https://g-mnews.com/en/global-games-market-will-generate-usd-187-7-billion-in-2024/ Executive Disorder: White House Weekly #9 https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/03/trump-administration-accidentally-texted-me-its-war-plans/682151/ https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/26/politics/the-atlantic-publishes-signal-messages-yemen-strike/index.html https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IF12581 https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-9930/ https://x.com/presssec/status/1904875629612331123?s=46 https://t.co/JYbx0FtHc9 https://x.com/kyledcheney/status/1904884072763044089 https://t.co/kOhUqcypOJ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-administration-deportation-flights-el-salvador-doubles-down/ https://t.co/eFo00blJBh https://x.com/David_J_Bier/status/1904526812434084143 https://truthout.org/articles/tufts-student-activist-rumeysa-ozturk-abducted-by-ice-on-her-way-to-iftar/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic of this episode?
I want you to ask yourself right now, how am I actually doing? Because it's a question that we rarely ask ourselves. All of May is actually Mental Health Awareness Month, and on the psychology of your 20s, we are taking a vulnerable look at why mental health is so hard to talk about. Prepare for our conversations to go deep.
I spent the majority of my teenage years and my 20s just feeling absolutely terrified. I had a panic attack on a conference call.
Knowing that she had six months to live, I was no longer pretending that this was my best friend.
So this Mental Health Awareness Month, take that extra bit of care of your well-being. Listen to The Psychology of Your 20s on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
In 2020, a group of young women found themselves in an AI-fuelled nightmare. Someone was posting photos. It was just me naked.
Well, not me, but me with someone else's body parts. This is Leavittown, a new podcast from iHeart Podcasts, Bloomberg and Kaleidoscope about the rise of deepfake pornography and the battle to stop it. Listen to Levittown on Bloomberg's Big Take podcast. Find it on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glott. And this is Season 2 of the War on Drugs podcast.
Last year, a lot of the problems of the drug war. This year, a lot of the biggest names in music and sports.
This kind of starts that a little bit, man.
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Chapter 2: How is the Trump administration handling asylum seekers?
Yeah, so to just make this clear, the thing that they're doing is they show up and they fucking destroy all your property.
Yep.
like the thing that it most closely resembles is like, we're doing our own miniature ethnic cleansings. Like that's just like what that is. Yeah.
Yeah. And every suite, there are at least several police, you know, depending on the size of the suite, they can be even more. And so there is a very real threat of police violence, like underlying every single encampment suite. Yeah.
And so the sweep that Oakland, the sweep practices that Oakland has set up are, like, very kind of odd, and they are associated with different, like, lawsuits that have occurred in the past couple of, actually since the 70s. But so there are certain requirements that the city of Oakland is obligated to follow, and, like, certain provisions and offers that, like,
homeless people are technically supposed to be receiving and for a bunch of complicated reasons like rarely ever are so for instance like the back and tag policy that uh satya was just discussing like dave recently somebody did a pra request to see whether or not to sit he was actually following faithfully following that policy and i think in like over a year
There were, I believe, eight bag-in tags that were registered in the city system. And that was, in that same period, there were, like, well over 100 sweeps, you know? Jesus. I don't have the exact number on me, but... Or, yeah, actually 537 closures. Jesus Christ. Two instances of storing property. So...
You know, that's people's, their whole lives, all their possessions, like precious items that they're able to hang on to are just, yeah, destroyed and they never see them again.
And I would also add to the piece around like the quote, like offer of services, like that's also something written into their policy that they're supposed to be connecting people to housing ahead of sweeps. And that's what they use to continually justify the way that they operate is that in, for example, city council meetings and homelessness commission meetings where people
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Chapter 3: What are encampment sweeps and why do they occur?
Let's run the second ad break and then we will come back. More ads. I don't know. Buy them? We are back. Let's talk about what the city's policies are supposed to be versus what they're actually doing on the ground.
Yeah, I mean, their policy is their cover your ass technique, right? Their policy is what they refer back to whenever they want to sort of like, like Emma said, if they're interfacing with businesses or house people, you know, and we have a whole range of house people calling 311, which is basically their tip line for like, oh, you see a homeless person that you don't want to be seeing.
But there's a whole range of people. There's people that are actively malicious and violent, and there's literally people going out doing vigilante shit and destroying homeless people's stuff on their own. And then you also have people that are well-intentioned and really think the city is offering services.
So you have this whole umbrella, and the narrative that the city sells to everybody is bolstered by their policy. That's the purpose their policy serves is not to inform their actions, but to inform their PR.
So I think it would be helpful, Emma, how do you feel about if you want to kind of give a breakdown of the city's policy, and then I can kind of give a breakdown into what that translates into on the ground?
Yeah, so this is like, it's kind of a complicated situation, but the city has what's what they call their encampment management policy. And it was initially passed, I believe 2020, but it's gone through several evolutions over the past 10 years or so. And it is related to different Supreme Court cases and the settlement that I mentioned earlier.
This policy, it provides certain very limited protections for people who are homeless in the city limits. The city is required by this policy to offer shelter. I believe it's a week for any person who's subject to one of their encampment closures. And also we mentioned the bag and tag policy.
So if somebody, you know, they are evicted and they move somewhere outside with a tent, they bring all of their possessions with them. They are provided with a, I believe, three foot by three foot like storage space. And this facility that is super inaccessible and kind of like,
I don't even know if it's actually real, to be honest, because I've never heard of anybody actually getting their stuff stored and getting it back. But technically, that is a possibility. However, the city will only hold on to it for so long before they throw it away.
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Chapter 4: What is the significance of the Alien Enemies Act?
There's going to be this back and forth interplay that we've seen recently.
you know for example in oakland with the safe works on ordinance which we can probably get into another time because it's way too much to get into right now i think at this point in the episode but it's a two-way street it's this fight that you have to play to show them just because you've passed this legislation doesn't mean you can enforce it in a particular way you have to give them something to fight against you know what i mean so that's just the other piece yeah
Yeah, and the rest of their policy is absolutely 100% evidence that if the state doesn't want to follow the law, it isn't real. But that also means that if they can't enforce a law, it also effectively ceases to exist. That's just the sort of balance of forces here.
Yeah, and there is a lawsuit currently against that, and it sounds like... The city of Fremont is probably going to be removing that aiding and abetting clause from the resolution, but because that specific provision is actually in the city's municipal code as a general provision. So even if they do remove it, charges could still be brought against somebody.
So really, the entire ordinance needs to be eliminated altogether.
Yeah, I guess, do you have anything else that you want to make sure that you get in before we close this out?
I don't think so. Nothing that comes to mind. But yeah, again, super appreciate you having us on to talk about this. Yeah, you know, shit is rough right now. I think for me personally, it's been really helpful to direct my energy towards... things in my social network in a way that's constructive and helpful to others.
So I would definitely suggest if you're feeling any despair or worried about becoming Blackpilled or whatever, yeah, just try to tap in and focus on things that are happening in your community. It's good for you and it's good for the people in your community.
yeah just seconding that I think like being able to tap in specifically with like the types of unhoused organizing and underground economies that exist wherever unhoused people exist and like being able to like tap into that and like you know again like speaking from the perspective of a housed person like really humble yourself and learn from that like you're gonna learn a whole lot more relevant life skills just hanging out in social settings with people in the street than you are in any other area of your life so
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Chapter 5: How does the U.S. immigration system affect vulnerable communities?
It's something that you should do. It's often not hideously expensive, and it's something that might be... Yeah, you have options, and options are good.
Yeah, I am very hesitant to openly call for, like, now is the time to leave the country. I do not feel comfortable saying that for a number of reasons. Some of them are more political, as in I don't really subscribe to a politics of escape. Even the idea of, like, fleeing states I feel a little bit iffy about.
Now, there's certainly, you know, a lot of cases where families are trying to move, you know, outside states that have more restricted access to trans healthcare for minors towards more friendly states, which I totally understand. But I have greatly enjoyed getting to know a whole bunch of trans people in the South, and a whole bunch of trans people here are...
not willing to leave their home this is this is their home and it always will be and they're going to stay and fight for it even as things get you know harder and i don't think you should write these people off i don't think you should write these places off these these places are still a terrain of battle and they're going to be places where trans people can still live and still live fulfilling lives in many cases and that is that is worth acknowledging that's worth putting effort into
to the point that after the election, I was already considering maybe trying to travel around the country some more. And after this last election, my line of thought was way more on the side of, I would actually like to spend as much time in Georgia as possible.
I would actually want to stay in the South for as much as I can, because this is not a place that I think people should be walking away from. And in some ways that does come from like a slightly privileged point of view for multiple reasons.
As someone who's white and holds a Canadian passport as well as an American passport, that is, you know, something that I like to have as a back pocket option. But that's something I'm not like considering like at all. Like I do not want to move to Canada. All my friends are here. My life is here.
There's certain scenarios where things get much, much, much worse, even though things are already getting quite bad. But there are certain scenarios where, yes, that passport will come in handy. And that's why I do encourage, like, no matter what, you should see if you have any options to become a citizen in more than one country. It is a great thing to be.
It's good to not be just tied down to one place. But the process of trying to immigrate somewhere where you do not have a citizenship is already quite challenging.
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Chapter 6: Should you consider relocating outside the U.S.?
Or like respectability in some way. Yeah. Except in like the reversed Sam Bankman Freedway where like the schlubbiness is part of what makes him like an eccentric genius, right? Like that era of like Silicon Valley guy. Yeah. That's like, he's so different, right? Like he's not like put together and this like shows how he's like a new and innovative thinker.
So it's kind of like it's kind of like a double edged sword in like that specific way. Yeah, well, this this is all a feedback loop, right?
Because like part of it not being respectable is that someone like Michael Lewis, right, who was like as establishment of a journalist as there's ever been. These people don't play video games. They're one of the few groups of people who just like don't game are these like traditional mainstream sort of access journalists. Right.
And so they run into this shit and they have no fucking idea what the hell is going on. And it's just really, really easy to sort of bamboozle them by just doing something that any gamer... You show a gamer a League of Legends addict, and they will instantly be able to just read this person a fucking book. Also, by the way, gaming addiction is like... kind of a fake thing.
I'm like mostly joking here, but also like League of Legends makes you a worse person. It simply does. You just get mad all the time. I know too many League of Legends players in my goddamn life. Holy shit. Terrible game. Yeah, but arcane though, right? All right. Continue. Oh, God.
Okay, we're going to take an ad break and then when I come back, I'm going to explain part of why this worked, which is the unique incompetence of Michael Lewis. Well, I look forward to that.
I love hearing about unique incompetence.
So we are back now. OK, obviously, part of the reason this works, too, is, you know, as I've been talking about, right, like these these really out of touch sort of like mainstream journalists who just don't understand an enormous market. Right. But Lewis is in some sense kind of a special case because he is really, truly an unbelievably gullible dumbass.
And to get an understanding of this, I'm going to go into something that Lewis, in theory, understands a lot better, which is sports. So Lewis has written two of the most famous books ever written about sports, right? He wrote Moneyball, which is the book that we're going to be talking about, which we'll get to in a second.
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Chapter 7: What are the risks and realities of seeking asylum?
Yes, they stole both of them. That's what I was thinking. And I am more of a baseball head than a football head.
Yeah, so, okay, unfortunately, we're going to be talking about football here. Bummer. So, this guy, right, Paul Podesta, is like one of these sort of geniuses. He later goes on to be... It's kind of unclear exactly what he was doing in the organization, but he is hired by the just absolutely wretched... the football franchise, the Cleveland Browns.
Now, to get an understanding of how wretched the Cleveland Browns are, my opening statement for him on the Browns is it is genuinely unclear how responsible Paul Podesta is for the Browns over the course of two seasons going 1-31. which is a feat of just absolutely sucking shit that is unrivaled in any other major American sports.
I think until the fucking moon crashes into the earth, no one is going to fucking go 1-31 in 2x2 seasons of football again. So again, that is a 1-15 season followed by an 0-16 season. It's the second 0-16 season ever. Unclear how responsible for this he is. But what he is responsible for is the Sean Watson trade. Okay, it's like, Mia, why the fuck are you talking about this?
Parts of this is also like, these people are just evil. Deshaun Watson is a serial sexual predator. I couldn't get an accurate estimate of how many women, specifically massage therapists mostly, have accused him of sexual assault. He is like one of the worst people in the entire NFL, which is a league of a lot of people who absolutely fucking suck shit.
So that's the first thing you have to understand about Watson, is that he is just really fucking, like, morally reprehensible, right? He is, like, a bad enough sexual predator that the NFL actually fucking suspended him for a season.
And Paul Podesta, who, again, is the guy who Michael Lewis is supposed to be, like, touting as, like, this genius analytics guy, decides that he is going to set up this deal for his team to trade for Deshaun Watson, who'd been on the Texans, and again, like... Garrison, imagine how evil you have to be for the Houston Texans to trade you on fucking moral grounds.
Mia, do you expect me to know anything about the Houston Texans? It is a team from Houston, Texas.
That's all you need to know about this. And they traded this guy.
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